How Far Away the Stars
by sarramaks
Summary: A killer contemplates her life prior to her own death.  Hotch/Prentiss undertones.  A short story, with some disturbing elements of crime fiction.


_A/N: I don't own Criminal Minds or the characters Hotch and Prentiss so don't sue._

_This is a long short story rather than a one shot. I hope you enjoy. I really am desperate for feedback on this, so I'd really appreciate reviews and there's a extra chapter focusing on the Hotch/Prentiss aftermath following their visit for those who review._

_Hope you enjoy – and PLEASE let me know what you think._

_Sarah x_

**How Far Away the Stars**

"How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart."

**William Butler Yeats**

It is easy to count the stars when you have so little time left. At least it is now, now that I can see them. When they asked what I wanted on my last night, they laughed at my response. _You can't count the stars_ they said. _Don't try to be funny, Marguerite; one night isn't enough to count the stars. What is it you really want?_

It was then I told them what they'd wanted to hear for the past twenty-five years. "Let me talk then," I said, "let me tell you what I did." Their eyes lit up, and I heard mutterings of words and acronyms I hadn't heard since a lifetime ago: _FBI, agents, officers... find out what she really did..._

They'd always wanted to know exactly what it was. It fascinates them; the idea that this little old woman took so many lives, unbeknownst to them, before handing herself in to the police. I'm not your typical murderer, you see. It wasn't about getting away with it; it was about getting rid of them. Even the planning of the first killing was magical, and by the third it was second nature; something I seemed to have been born for.

By the afternoon of my request, two agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation were there – it must have been a slow day in the world of serial killers to warrant such speed for a woman who had been on death row for a quarter of a century already, but no doubt the authorities didn't want me to change my mind and take my secrets with that last kiss of an injection. One of the guards, Susie, took me to a place in the prison I hadn't been before, which was strange considering I have been in this place since before she was born.

Susie was one of my favourites; she was too big for her bones, and her skin wrinkled like a too-ripe nectarine, but she always smiled, was always polite and never judged. We like that here; someone who lets what we've done wash over their heads as if it never happened. For here is a different life to the one we had previously, a life spent in a constant state of waiting for death. Some of us have had to deal with the ghosts that torment us, while other lament on their lost freedom. I did neither of these. I'd chosen to be in this place, and in the time I'd been here, I'd learnt many things I would have done so elsewhere.

Once Susie asked me why I'd done it, then clarified her question by saying she meant why I'd handed myself in. I didn't answer, for that was nobody's business but my own, and instead Susie kept talking, her motive for asking not noisiness, but personal. Since she was six, her papa had crept into her bedroom each night, and I needn't say more than that because you can guess why. His bedtime stories gave her nightmares, and now Susie had moved out and he had remarried. But he had another daughter, Amie, who was five.

And that had made Susie's nightmares start again.

I told her what I would do, or rather I hinted at it. It was a technique I used on my fifth, who had a similar issue to Susie's father. It wasn't a painless method, for him anyway, but the slow torture he went through in the hours before his death began to make up for the agony he'd caused others during the past thirty seven years of his existence. I felt life tingle in my toes as I suggested in a story sort of way, what she did. I almost regretted my second to last act on this earth at that moment. My last being what was scheduled to happen in a few days.

Susie's next shift was three days later. When I saw her, she'd had her hair dyed and she was wearing a little make up for the first time ever. She smiled at me from across the yard where we were doing our daily exercise, or in Martha's case, our daily gossip, and gave a single wave. I knew Susie's nightmares had finished, and that Amie's would never begin.

"I can cuff her if you like," Susie offers the two FBI agents. The male, whose skin looked on the verge of being haggard, as the muscles used to smile were now as flaccid as a retired wrestler's, looked at me with interest. I would have been different to the photos he would have seen in my file, or in the newspapers at the time, as they would have been twenty five years out of date. I was old now, although I would have been old twenty five years ago in comparison to his companion.

"It's fine," he said. "I think we can leave the cuffs off."

Susie nodded and gave me a smile. "It's my last week," she said. "I've got a place at college."

I felt tears prick at the back of my eyes, and I said nothing as I smiled back, just giving the smallest of nods.

"Congratulations," the female agent says to her. I wouldn't have said she was pretty, she wasn't young enough for pretty, but she was good to look at with her almost black hair and flawless skin. They matched, these two agents, equally attractive, despite the fact he needed to smile. "What are you going to study?"

"Criminology," Susie says and catches my eye. "The buzzer's on the wall near the door. Press it when you're done, or if you need coffee. Or if Marguerite is misbehaving."

Then both these agents look at me, and for a moment I see what they see. I'm withered now; three inches shorter than what I was in my prime; my hair is downy, almost like a baby's in its fineness, and the weight I've lost in the past few months has reduced my body to bone with empty flesh sheathing the innards. I am no longer attractive, now I am like a butterfly awaiting death.

But this is my final flight, my last dance around the light.

A chance to count the stars.

"You've asked to tell someone what you did," the female agent says. "We've come to listen. We're from the Behavioural Analysis Unit at Quantico. I'm Agent Emily Prentiss and this is Agent Aaron Hotchner."

"Have you heard of us before – the BAU?" Agent Aaron Hotchner says. I smile at him as I weigh him up. What kind of a man is he? How many people has he killed with the guns he has carried over the years? With his hands? For a woman or a child? For himself? Will he answer my questions? Maybe.

"I had a way with men," I begin to tell them, ignoring his question. It doesn't matter whether I'm aware of their business or not – what does it matter to me? I'll be dead in three days.

That certainty of knowing exactly when one will die is both terrifying and exhilarating, like standing at the top of a mountain and seeing the world around you, knowing that in a moment you will fly. I had no regrets, and I had no reason to make amends. No god I believed in would condemn me for what I had done, and as there was no proof of hell, unless I was there already, I had nothing to fear.

"I had a way with men," I repeat. "Ever since I was a small girl I knew how to charm them. I guess I was a bit like Lolita. I liked their attention, I liked the way I could manipulate them, but they could never do the same to me. I saw men as a different species, less intelligent. They lacked the finesse of women and girls. Their bodies were awkward, as were their minds. They lacked empathy and the ability to understand why a person may act as they did. I felt sorry for them."

I glance at him, Agent Hotchner, and he's listening intently. He's intelligent, enough to not be insulted by what I've just said as he knows I am generalising.

"But I also detested them. I saw their baseness from an early age. They were driven by sex and power. My father would come home after getting his pay on a Friday afternoon and make me go out to play with my friends or go see my grandmother who lived a mile away. One day I didn't do what I was told, and instead I hid in the garden, which was overgrown with shrubs and trees and sat with the spiders and beetles, listening to the animal noises that came from within the house.

"They scared me at first, and then I began to recognise their tone. I heard my mother scream and realised that any pain she was in was pleasurable, and that there was pleasure to be found in pain. Then I heard my father laugh a few moments later and I dug my finger nails into the soil. This was why he was happy all weekend; he had claimed his woman, brought home the money to keep his home his and he was in charge. And my mother got whatever she wanted.

"At least he thought he was in charge. What he didn't know was that my mother was having an affair with a man who came by once a week. He was a photographer named James Phillips, a nice man who brought me candy. My mother smiled after his visits like she never smiled on a Friday. I didn't understand why until my third husband."

I pause for a moment, watching the agents again. They are both so young, and so unknowing. I don't doubt that they have seen areas of life others will never even consider, but there are experiences they have not yet tasted. The sweetest peach on the hottest day; the touch of a lover's skin when there is nothing else to consider except the snow outside; the look in the eyes of the person you love just before -

"How many men did you kill?" Emily Prentiss asks me. It's what they all want to know. I confessed and gave proof of only one, but told the judge in court that there were several others. I studied the law beforehand, and knew exactly what I needed to show to be given the death penalty. But they wanted more than my confession. I look at her pale skin, her dark eyes contrasting with her complexion. The eyes could have sullied her skin, but there was a depth in them that allowed a reflection of her thoughts. She was not a complex girl to read, but I figured that the man next to her still found her an enigma.

"Seventeen," I tell her, the first time I have revealed this number and the word tastes as sweet as a cherry.

"Do you remember them all?" Hotchner says. He has a quiet voice, one that is good to listen to. One that would be good for uttering all the words a woman wants to hear. He's genuine one though. Those words would never be weapons.

"Each and every one. And yes, I still think about them, I still relive what I did like watching a favourite scene from a movie, or looking at a photograph album." I laugh, my lips curled in irony. It's a serial killer trait, to want to go over your crimes in your mind. "I'm no different to the other killers you have spoken to in that respect, Agent Hotchner. I enjoyed what I did, and that's why I knew they had to lock me up." My eyes dance, and I know he can't decide whether I am sane or not. I enjoy his confusion.

"Let me tell you how it started," I say. "But first, we all need a coffee." He does as he's bid and I see Emily's eyes dance at him as he gets up to buzz Susie. I doubt Agent Hotchner is used to taking orders, and it's amused her that he is taking them from me. But like I said, I have a way with men.

"How long have you been in the FBI for?" I ask Emily.

"A decade or just over," she says. "The BAU for four years." She doesn't quite understand me yet. She knows what I've done, but she's not sure why, and she's not scared of me. Why should she be? I never hurt anyone who didn't deserve it.

Emily stands up and walks over to Hotchner. They stand close, closer than colleagues should. Most people keep a distance of around eighteen inches from each other; get within a foot and there's something less than platonic going on. They weren't aware of it; their guards were down as they wouldn't stand so close in front of their colleagues, or their boss. But I was irrelevant. Who was I going to tell? They knew I could keep secrets.

Susie comes with the coffees, and a plate of sandwiches that she has somehow persuaded the cook to make. I raise an eyebrow – or what remains of it my hair is so fine now, and she smiles. "They're fine," she says. "I have no reason..." She gives a dramatic shrug for comic effect and I wonder how long it will be before she's lost weight. She has no reason not to now.

"Who was your first victim?" Hotchner asks, and I know he has chosen the word victim to get a reaction so I laugh and give him one.

"Victim? None of them were victims," I smile, remembering the first kill. I don't dress up what I did, I killed them. I didn't put them out of their misery, because it wasn't their misery I was putting them out of. "I was fifteen, almost sixteen, and his name was Benoit Robles. He was the father of a girlfriend..."

_...and the leaves had already begun to be plundered by Autumn; their yellows and reds a reflection of the late afternoon sun. We had homework, an essay to write, but more importantly I had a dress to make up for the dance that coming Friday, and sewing was not my strong point._

_Angela excelled in dressmaking. Even at sixteen she was being asked by the women of the neighbourhood to make skirts and dresses for them, and she was making a fair few dollars from her talent. Her father took the money, we all guessed that, because she could never afford any material for her own clothes. Some of the women had realised this and now paid her in cloth instead._

_I had discarded my shoes and walked barefoot along the long woodland path that joined our two homes. I didn't care much for the ladylike conventions. My hair was too long and tangled, and there was mud spattered up my leg from playing with my little brother. I had a tear to the front of my skirt that needed mending for the third time, but there were more interesting things to do._

_Angela had moved to our town two years ago, and living so close in comparison, we had become good friends. She always came to mine though, saying her father didn't like to be bothered by her, and didn't want the noise of her and her friends. I didn't think too much of it, until I made my way through the trees and their undressing of leaves, to the small house where Angela lived._

_She was slouched like an abandoned doll on the bench outside, her shoulder shaking. For a moment, I stood and watched, working out what might have happened. I heard the sound of chopping wood, an axe falling through the air and slicing its target. As I walked closer I could see red marks around her neck, marks that would mean she'd miss the dance on Friday._

_When she noticed me, she looked startled; ashamed then afraid. "You need to go," she mouthed. "Before he sees you."_

_I shook my head. I've never been afraid. I've never seen any reason to be. "What did he do?" I said aloud._

"_It doesn't matter," she said. "Just go."_

"_No." I knew what he had done. "Is this the first time it's happened?"_

_Angela laughed quietly and shook her head. "It's why my mother left."_

"_Why don't you come stay with me?" It wasn't a stupid offer. My mom wouldn't mind as long as she helped around the house and with my brothers and sisters, and my dad was better natured now than he had been in years thanks to the success of his business._

_She stared at the ground, her feet frozen to it and I knew she was hurting in more ways than one. "No. I can't. I'll help you with your dress later. I'll come over to you." She stood up and disappeared into the house. _

_I watched her go in, the material dripping down from my hand onto the floor creating a yellow pool. Then I heard a man's voice._

"_Marguerite?" _

_It didn't scare me, it fact, it made me stronger. I knew what he was._

_I turned around and looked at him. He strode towards me, almost a foot taller than I was and broad. I didn't move._

_He grabbed me between my legs through my torn skirt and pushed his face close to mine. "If you say anything..."_

_I stared at him coldly. "I won't say anything," I said. He let go and backed away, still staring at me. I waited until he'd gone before I started back along the path, a battle between us as to who would go first and I think my lack of fear scared him. I could hear the chopping of wood again, cold against the warm heat of the autumn sun. Birds sang, and rabbits scrambled between the bushes._

_I could tell my father, who would no doubt take his own axe around to Angela's father's, but that would create problems for my own family. I climbed up a tree to the fifth branch and sat down; I was too light for it to even sway gently and no one would see me up there, unless they looked up, which they never do. People rarely look in any place bar the obvious._

_That evening, after Angela had been round as promised, and helped me get started on the dress, I began to lay out some plans. I persuaded my mom and dad to go out that Friday, letting Angela look after my youngest brother and sister. Mom had seen the red marks on her neck, and cast me a knowing glance, so she agreed without question. I guess I learned a lot from my mom._

_And then I went hunting, seeking places that only a girl brought up in the woodlands would know about..._

The agents' eyes were brimming with questions, but neither of them said anything. I sat back a little in the chair, and studied them. Without looking, I knew that their knees were close enough to be touching under the table, but not quite. I liked her; she was straightforward, I could tell. She would fight on the side of those who needed it, and nothing would even persuade her sense of right and wrong to be moved. But would I? It didn't matter if I didn't or I did.

"Have you heard of amanitas?" I say, looking at both agents.

The man nods, and I figure there's not much he hasn't heard of. "Amanitas are mushrooms," he says. "Commonly known as Destroying Angels."

I bow my head and smile, like a teacher would do to acknowledge a correct answer. "They are one of the deadliest forms of fungi to be found. One cap can kill a man. My grandfather picked mushrooms; he lived very much off the land, and when I was small he'd take me with him. Amanitas are easy to confuse with other – edible - mushrooms, which is part of the reason you rarely find an old mushroom hunter. I learned early on what one looked like and I knew never to pick it.

"But that evening, after mom had agreed to Angela looking after the little ones, I took the dog for a walk through the woods and found where the amanitas grew. I didn't pick them, the fresher the better, but I began to feel confident in what I had planned."

Emily shifts forward some. "Did you ever feel guilty? That what you were doing was wrong?"

I laugh. "No, why should I? If you're dead you don't feel anything. Angela wasn't dead but she felt like dying every day because of what he was doing to her..."

_...That Friday night I went to the dance with a boy named Ben. We danced and laughed. He drank some of his dad's whisky that he'd smuggled out, but I refused. At first it made him worry, that I was prudish, but I showed him that I was not. All the time I was thinking of what I was going to do once the sun had set properly, and it made me feel alive. I was the most powerful person in the universe at that moment, and nothing could change that._

_I left Ben and the music, and started to walk to Angela's house. Her father was a regular at one of the bars in town, but I knew what time he would be home; it was the same every Friday night; she would leave whatever she was doing with me to run back home and be there for his arrival. I knocked on his door, noticing that the light was on, and he opened up looking dishevelled and drunk._

"_Why are you here?" he said, and I felt his eyes travel across my skin, appraising what Ben had been feeling only an hour earlier. It didn't disgust me, although it probably should, because I knew I knew what I was feeling was wrong. Girls my age didn't do this. Not nice ones._

"_Why do you think?" I said, widening my eyes, and pushing my chest forward._

_He licked his lips. "You'd better come in then."_

_I put my purse down on the kitchen counter before he began to paw me. "You gonna tell anyone?" he said. "Tell Angela?"_

"_No," I said, once his mouth started to travel down my neck. He could barely stand, and I knew other parts of him weren't working either. I knew too much for my age, but then I guess I'd been born old. I had my first proper boyfriend at fourteen, a summer romance. He'd been a ranch hand two miles away, and good with his hands. "What would people think if I told?"_

"_That you're easy?" he said. Even if he wasn't so drunk, I doubt he would have said anything else. _

_I let him continue, before breaking off, allowing my breath to have become slightly quickened._

"_What is it?" he said, his hands at the top of my legs._

"_You're too drunk," I said, stating the obvious. "Why don't I cook you something to sober up? I don't need to be home till morning. We have all night."_

_He gaped at me, as if he couldn't believe his luck. I smiled, running a hand through my hair, and pulling my dress back down to a decent level. My hair was mussed and I could feel that I was flushed. It wasn't him, it was the power, the control, the knowing._

"_Okay," he said. "Can I ask, Marguerite, why d'you come here?"_

_Flattering a drunken male is never difficult." Because I wanted a man. You go sit down – I'll cook you some eggs and mushrooms."_

_He was half asleep when I brought him his supper. He ate greedily, gazing all the time at the patches of uncovered flesh I had left on show. I gave him a mug of coffee, heavily laced with my grandmother's sleeping tablets, and watched as he finished._

"_I think I should marry you," he said. It wasn't a strange thing to say. It was the 1950's and there was no reason why in a few months I shouldn't marry. Although spending anything more than a little killing time with a monster like him was unthinkable._

_I smiled, watching as he started to drift off to sleep, everything eaten. I left the plate and mug where they were and slipped out of the house through an open window, having made sure the door was locked from the inside. _

_The woodland was never as welcoming as that evening. The waning moon was clear in the sky, and everything was lit as if with magic. I felt no shame or guilt, just happiness and a sense of achievement that no perfect score at school had ever given me._

_Angela was asleep on the sofa when I got home, my younger siblings tucked away in bed and my parents still out at another neighbour's where my dad was playing poker and my mom drinking gin. I woke her up and told her to stay the night, go home in the morning to give her dad her babysitting money my folks had paid, and then we'd go to the lake for the day._

_It never bothered me that I knew what she would find when she got home. Symptoms from ingesting amanitas took about five hours to show, but by that time his liver and kidney tissue would be destroyed, and he wouldn't have even been conscious. When he awoke, he would find himself in a pool of vomit and diarrhoea, shaking like he had never done from whisky, and excruciating stomach pain. And there would be no one there to help..._

"That night," I continue. They hadn't interrupted yet and I wondered what they thought. "That night I slept like a baby. When I went with Angela later the next morning, he was already dead. The doctor said he must have made himself a late night snack, having picked up the wrong sort of mushrooms that were growing wild. I'd made sure to leave a couple of amanitas uncooked so they would know why he had died, save them looking too closely. He'd been drunk, and made a simple mistake. Angela's mom heard and came back for her, and I lost my friend. But that didn't matter. I didn't kill him to keep her my friend forever."

Hotchner sits back, stretching slightly, and I realise how much time has passed in the telling of my first time. There isn't time enough left for me to explain each death like this, not before it is time for my own. "Did Angela know it was you?" Hotchner says.

I shrug. "I don't know. Maybe. Does it matter if she did? She was never any different towards me before she left, except sometimes I caught her starting at me, so maybe she did have an idea."

Their hands are close to each other, both lying palm down on the table, the others around their coffee. I smile knowingly, making it obvious enough for them to notice and Hotchner looks at me with questions.

"You're together, happily so. You should let those scars heal now, you know, maybe smile some," I say, not caring if I speak out of turn.

Emily laughs now and looks at Hotchner. He remains as straight faced as when I first saw him, and Emily tries to curb her laughter.

"You killed seventeen men altogether?" He has taken his notebook out now. I'm relieved to see it as I want this recording, but not on one of those dictating machines.

"No," I say. I know where he has the mistake from. "I killed seventeen people, but two of them were female." I list the names now, giving him time to write each one down, and telling him the place where they had lived. Few of these deaths would be unsolved murders. Most were registered as accidents.

He puts down the notebook at looks at me with honest eyes. "Why have you decided to discuss what you've done twenty five years since you were incarcerated?" he says. "There may be a stay of execution while further investigations are carried out, but without much evidence, it's unlikely to take long."

I smile again, this time wistfully. "I don't want a stay of execution – I have no need to live any longer, and I don't want it to seem like I'm trying to hurt the relatives of these people I killed," I tell him, taking a sandwich. It's ham and I wonder if either of them are Jewish. "People have always asked, and I've never wanted to tell. I didn't kill these people to become famous, or to get my name in the papers."

"Then why did you kill them, Marguerite?" Emily says. I see her looking at the sandwiches and I push the plate towards her.

"Because they were causing so much harm," I say, and I feel a shake in my voice. "And I enjoy killing people." I feel cold saying it, but it's the truth, the lovely warm truth about the little old lady sat at the table, eating a ham sandwich. I've answered her next question already, too. She would have wanted to ask why I never simply went to the police – that would have taken the fun away, and besides, the police may not always have the evidence, in which case a whistle blower causes more harm than good.

"Let me tell you about Clara Jones," I say. "I don't have time to tell you about them all, and I'm sure you have other places to go anyway, but let me tell you about Clara."

Hotchner nods, his shoulder brushing Emily's and I remind myself to ask them about their relationship before they go.

"Clara was my sister-in-law," I say as Emily picks up a sandwich. She must be hungry, as there's few people who can eat at the same time that murder's being discussed. "My second husband's elder sister. I was twenty-three and by this age I had killed three people, none of which had been murder enquiries, although the second – David Holland – had been touch and go for a while. Clara was older than my husband by eleven years, making her forty seven. Their parents had been plantation owners in the south and in North Carolina, and had ended up with enough money to make them comfortable for the rest of their lives and a few years beyond that.

"Their father died too early, and Mama Jones suffered greatly after his death. She had a mild stroke which left her confused and needing twenty four hour care...

_..."She's eating away at our inheritance. We should fine a care home that's cheaper than this live-in nursing thing – or even better, have Marguerite take care of her!"_

_It was Clara again, the same thing being said again on yet another Sunday evening. Her voice was as brittle as dried wood and it echoed around the room that had been furnished beyond my imagination with expensive furniture and ornate decorations from fifty years ago._

_I loved this room, the drawing room, and I would sit here for hours on a hot day, soaking in the shade as I sketched. Mama Jones would sit with me, enjoying the silence, and gazing out of the window at nothing in particular._

_Now though, it was filled with Clara's cries for Mama Jones to be taken away from her refuge, her prime concern money, as it always was. I glanced at my husband, husband number two as I had been widowed at twenty, and hoped he would gain the backbone to say something against Clara's proposal._

"_Clara," Victor said, the middle of Mama Jones' three beneficiaries, and perhaps the one with the most sense. "There will be enough money for everyone, even if we make sure that Mama has the best level of care. She could live for years yet. Could you really live with going to visit her in a home once a week, knowing you'd taken her away from the place she loved best?"_

_My sister-in-law's face contorted with something that should have been shame, but I read correct as her reaction to being caught out. Clara had no love for her mother; she had been a daddy's girl, and had resented the attention her father had given his wife. She was also Mama Jones' stepdaughter, her own mother having died shortly after childbirth, and even though there had never been any difference in Mama's eyes, Clara had always borne umbrage towards her._

_I turned my eyes away from the book I was reading and looked towards Victor. He was playing chess with my husband, Edward, only he was half concentrating while Edward was fully immersed in trying to beat his elder brother. "I don't think Clara would have an issue with visiting Mama in a care home because she'd be too busy spending the money to visit," I said, making sure my voice was clear._

_Edward looked up at me, cigarette in hand. He coughed a little, smoke spilling out into the blue of the room. "Now, Reet," he said. "I'm sure that's not entirely true." He looked towards his sister who sat surly on the large sofa, her legs curled behind her in a manner that looked most uncomfortable. Clara hadn't liked me from the start; I had always been too much of a threat to her. That, and she suspected that my marriage to her brother was a sham._

_There was a note of sarcasm in Edward's voice that was unmistakable, and Clara look at him with wasps of fury in her eyes. "I only want what's best for mother, and ourselves," she said, shooting out her words like bullets. The first part of her sentence sounded hollow, and even Victor looked upset. Clara was like a dog with a bone when she got an idea into her head, and she would pester both her brothers until they gave in, just for a peaceful life._

_She didn't work; never had to. Cosseted by her father, and then married to a wealthy business man, she had far too much time on her hands having never had children. Instead she organised various women's events and took classes in music and painting, in neither of which she excelled. After I returned from my marriage to Edward, I tried to get to know her, to form some sort of relationship with her, despite the difference in age. But she had found me repugnant; my youth, and probably the teenage-like slenderness of my limbs and body showed up what she had become. She detested my sketching, and disliked the fact that I could hold a decent conversation with almost anyone, in spite of the fact that I hadn't had a good education._

"_Look," Clara said. "No one wants to look after Mama..."_

"_Neither Edward nor I have the time," Victor said. "Which is why we employ someone Mama is happy with. I see no reason to change the status quo here, Clara. Unless Mama gets in a way where she is unable to function here even with help, she stays in the house that she loves, with her belongings and her family nearby. And it's out of the question to ask Reet to look after her. Mama is not Reet's responsibility."_

_I wouldn't have minded. As Edward's wife, I was not expected to work. Instead, the hopes were that I would conceive quickly, and carry on the family name. Both Edward and I knew that it was unlikely to happen. Clara was correct in her assumption; the marriage was a sham, an agreement between two people who did love each other very much, but it was a love that friends shared, not lovers. I needed a shield, having inherited a rather large sum of money from my first husband who died in circumstance that weren't apparently suspicious, and Edward needed cover. He had a lover, one in New Orleans, named Henrique. Henrique was a sweet boy, gentle and kind, the same age as myself, and we had spent a joyous fortnight with him on our honeymoon, enjoying the music, the food and the drink. _

_And the nights. While my 'husband' and his lover had disappeared to bed, I had discovered my own religion; the soft sounds of the saxophone and the way it made me move, the easy acquaintances and those long hours of darkness, more colourful that the days . Those two weeks have always stayed with me, never fading memories, a picture that has never lost its hue._

_Clara stood up uncomfortably, straightening the dress she had worn that was a little too tight. "We have to think of ourselves, you know," she said. "We can't always think of Mama."_

_Edward looked up from the chess board, his forehead creased with a frown, as if he had just realised something. "Clara," he said. "Is there a problem at home? Do you need money? If that's the case, we can always sort something out for you." _

_I looked back down at my sketch book, bracing myself for the thunderstorm that was about to break. I had speculated to Edward before that Clara's husband wasn't doing as well as he had been at work, and she was struggling to maintain the lifestyle to which she had become dependent._

_She didn't respond, which surprised me. Instead she left the room, focusing on only the door and slammed it behind her, creating a thud which was enough to knock over one of Edward's pawns._

_I followed her out, not rushing, but my instincts told me that her exit had been too calm for Clara, and something else was weighing on her mind. My feet were bare, as usual, something no rich husband had managed to cure me of, and made no sound on the heavy wooden flooring that was so intricately designed._

_Clara didn't see me as I stood at the kitchen threshold while she looked through Mama's medication. She was reading the doctor's notes, looking at the dosage, and I knew then exactly what she was planning to do. It would be easier for Mama to die now, they we could all get our inheritance. Clara's money problems would never have to be aired and there would be no conflict between her and her brothers to try to win._

_I coughed, making her aware of my presence and she stared at me, her hands still grasping the pill bottles. "I was just checking..."_

"_Her medication is still the same. Nothing's changed since the last prescription the doctor gave her," I knew full well that Clara had no idea of what that was anyway, having been around as little as dutifully possible._

_She lifted up her chin. "Oh. That's good then." She put the bottles back and shut the door. "I need to get home."_

_Clara moved the quickest I'd ever seen her, scuttling out of the room like a spider. I didn't follow her, toying with the notion of telling Edward and Victor what I had just seen, but that wouldn't stop what Clara had planned, they'd be too static, unbelieving that a person could do such a thing. But I knew they could._

_The kitchen table was generally used by the maid and the man-servant employed by Mama. No one from the family sat there generally, accept me. I would walk to the house some mornings and have coffee with Aliyah and Wendell, help make some brownies to take to a poor family who lived nearby, and learn to make Jambalaya. Mama would sometimes join us, when she was clear in her mind, and she would recount stories of the south, of her days in Mexico as a girl, and she would ask about Henrique, Edward's friend in New Orleans, and if we'd heard from him recently._

_She knew. She always knew._

_I looked out of the big glass doors out over the gardens, manicured like a queen's nails, and contemplated what to do. Clara was my sister-in-law, Edward's sister, and she was loved in a way. Yet I couldn't let her do what she had planned, what I thought she had planned._

_My thoughts were interrupted by the tapping of a stick against the floor, and I looked up to see Mama standing there, her thick greying hair styled in the manner of the 1900's, looking as gentrified and as beautiful as she had in her wedding photograph, albeit in a different way. Her face was worn but her eyes still shone as blue as the Louisiana sky._

"_You're not smiling, Reet," she said, coming to the table and sitting down, her hips visibly creaking. "Has my daughter been upsetting you again?"_

"_It takes a lot more than Clara to upset me, Mama," I said. "You want coffee?"_

_She shook her head. "Bourbon. It'll not do me any harm."_

_She had a bottle – or rather several bottles – that her sons were unaware of. Mama liked a bourbon, more than what they knew, and I saw no harm in her indulging in a small comfort. Clara disapproved, like she did of most things, saying it was ungodly, and wrong. She'd tried to take me to task when she found me drinking whisky one evening with her husband, discussing Eisenhower and the recession, her anger focused on the glass in my hand rather than the looks her husband was giving me._

_I found the tumblers next to the bourbon and went to the ice house. She didn't like it too cold, it took away the burn, and eventually watered the drink down. When I returned, she was looking in the medicine cupboard, her cane fallen on the floor._

_I put the tumblers down and picked it up for her, offering my arm to escort her back to the table. "She's been looking, hasn't she?"_

"_Clara?" I said, a rhetorical question. "You saw her too?"_

_Mama nodded. "I heard as well. Some days I hear everything, cher. Some days I hear nothing, and that's the way the world goes, but today I heard everything."_

_She knew. She knew like I did. I studied her, not as an elderly lady, but as a woman. She was dying, slowly. She knew she only had a certain amount of time left before another stroke took her, or some other ailment cut those last strings of life. An ailment possibly called Clara._

"_Clara's not going to do anything stupid, Mama," I said, looking into those eyes that today saw so clearly. "I'll make sure of that."_

"_You'll be the first," she said, taking the tumbler to her lips and sipping at the amber liquid. _

_And the last, I thought..._

...The agents are still saying very little. They haven't interrupted me in the entire time I've been speaking. I'd expected them to bombard me with questions, to leave no stone unturned, but that hasn't happened. I'd like to know what they're thinking, but Hotchner is as unreadable as a code without a key.

"How did you make sure Clara was planning to kill her step mother?" Emily says. She's eaten five sandwiches now. She reminds me of how I was with my appetite, yet never put on an ounce of weight.

"I watched her," I say. "I had to make sure, otherwise I was doing something far more wrong than what I intended, and I knew that if she planned to tamper with Mama's medicines, she'd have to do it gradually. I also knew she was desperate. It didn't take much – just a few drinks – to get her husband to explain how he was about to lose all his money, and possibly their house. I liked him, however much he talked to my chest, and tried to brush his hand against my thigh, he would never have done anything more unless I'd instigated it. I knew Clara had a good life insurance policy, so he would be alright.

"Clara began to visit Mama more often, something Victor and Edward both noticed. They thought it was down to remorse, that her outburst that Sunday had caused her to think more kindly about her stepmother, and I didn't correct them."

"Did you look forward to what you were going to do?" Hotchner says. He's not eaten yet, and I wonder if he'd prefer something warm instead. I doubt he snacks, he's too regimented for snacks. Three regular meals a day, and fruit in between. He needs to indulge sometimes. I hope she teaches him that.

"Of course," I say. "I'm a murderer, Agent Hotchner. I guess you'd classify me as a psychopath now. It was all I could think about when I was on my own, what I would do. I didn't like her, and I'd seen the hurt she'd caused, particularly to Mama. My looking forward to it helped me to plan. I made sure I was around Mama's a lot, checking the medicine cupboard after each of Clara's visits. I knew what each pill looked like, and I could see that when Mama was having a bad day – and there were days she wouldn't know who we were or that her husband was dead, there would be extra pills, or ones I didn't recognise in her pill box. I corrected it, made sure they were always correct, and I saw Clara become more and more frustrated at Mama's too slow decline.

"Her husband was away in New York, and I called him to ask how long he'd be away for, requesting he bring me back a gift from Macy's. He needed to have a tight alibi, as I had no intention of making Clara's death look like an accident..."

_...It was March, and spring was coming late. Winter was still at large in the air, and plantation owners and farmers were worrying about late frosts. On a Wednesday, Clara had a bridge night at the house of an affluent friend. It was a regular occurrence, and whatever the weather, she would go, returning shortly before eleven. I knew this well, as it had become a time for me to see her husband. I missed sex, having become used to its presence in my life, and being Edward's wife meant it wasn't available as it used to be, so I began an affair with Charles. He was a nice man, and he served a purpose for me, and I him._

_With Charles away, and both Victor and Edward in New Orleans on business, there were few people to be implicated in what I was about to do. I was staying with Mama, having claimed my own home felt too unsafe with Edward away, and there had been several robberies in the area where people had been hurt, as useful happening for me, anyway._

_I helped Mama to bed, and asked if she would mind me sleeping on the chaise longue in her room. We'd become closer over the past few months. She'd been lucid when I'd had the news that my own mother had passed away, and she had become my confidante on the days when she was well enough. _

"_I'll be here all night, Mama," I said, my heart pounding as I pretended to read a book. I waited for her to go to sleep, then left the house with the bag I'd already packed through an open window and ran to Clara and Charles' house, a mile and a half away. The night was cold, yet I didn't feel it. I was inhuman at that point, something had awoken within me, and again I was untouchable, just like the night when I had killed Angela's father._

_I used a brick to break the glass of the door that led out onto the garden, and went through the house, pulling down pictures and breaking their frames, knocking over ornaments and lamps, and pulling out drawers. I didn't enjoy the untidiness of it, the mess. I already preferred my killings to be neat affairs, with little aftermath, but this one had to be different._

_I took a sharp carving knife from the kitchen and hid in the shadows by the main door, the door which Clara always used. A million scenarios flipped through my head as I waited; what if she brought a man back with her? A woman? What if she didn't come back or Charles came home early? And then I heard the key twist in the lock and the door pushed open._

_Her gasp echoed through the hallway as she saw the disarray in front of her, and then fear seeped in, so much I could almost hear her heart pounding. Her eyes were wide and her feet were too heavy on the ground to move. I shifted silently from the side, slipping behind her without her noticing. Her eyes were stuck on the photograph of her own mother, now on the floor, a man's footprint staining it._

_I yanked back her hair and she screamed, but the house was too far away from her neighbours for them to hear._

"_Please, please," she said, begging. "I'll give you anything you want..."_

_I put the blade to her throat, feeling adrenaline flow through my bloodstream in a current as fast as a tsunami. We were the same height, and she was bigger than me, but I was lithe and muscular, fitter than she was and nimble. "I don't want anything," I told her._

"_Marguerite?" Her plea was desperate. "Why are you doing this?"_

_I didn't respond. The blade was freshly sharpened and I didn't need to apply much pressure as I slide it from right to left with my left hand, the opposite of what I would have done naturally. She fell to the floor, just alive still, and looked at me with eyes that were becoming as vacant as Mama's on a bad day._

_I used the old men's shoes I had brought with me, found in someone's garbage a few days ago when I had been to deliver the brownies, and walked through the blood that was still pouring from her. Bloody footprints stained the floor, and I heard a last gasp from Clara as I walked her blood into the cream woollen carpet she was so proud of._

_I'd opened a window, and exited through that, leaving the shoes behind and ran barefoot across the fields through the dark camouflage of night. Smith Mountain Lake was a fifteen minute run through the woods, and I didn't feel the scratches of dead branches on my legs and feet as I galloped along the path like a gazelle. I felt exhilarated, the rush of blood warming my body enough so that I was numb to the icy fingers of the water as I dived in, soaking my clothes and my skin, ridding myself of any visible evidence. In a couple of days, at Mama's, I would put the clothes on the incinerator, let them burn. Until then, I would store them under Mama's bed, a place no police officer would think to look. The water was still, and I moved through it like a fish, keeping the lake's skin uncreased._

_The cold of the March air didn't sting my wet skin as I ran back to Mama's. I slipped back in through the window, and changed in the room that had become my own, towel drying my hair. I had washed it before helping Mama get into bed, so no one would question the wet pillow case. Mama was still fast asleep, her face gentled by the night and her breathing steady and deep. I had no idea how long she would have left in this house, for how many months she would remain on this planet, but it would be for longer now._

_Sleep came easily, far easier than it should, and I didn't recall my dreams when I woke the next morning. I helped Mama get dressed and then we walked outside to celebrate the start of a good day for her, and I noticed the first true flower of spring raising its head to the sun that seemed to be shining a little brighter..._

..."How long was it before Clara's body was discovered?" Emily asks, her fingers entwined together as she studies me.

"It was three days later. I didn't know at the time, but she had cancelled her daily maid service and had a cleaner coming in twice a week instead to save money. No one had expected to see her, at least, not enough to raise an alarm," I say, remembering the day, and the reaction from my husband and Mama. "The postman dropped by with the mail, and smelt something odd. He looked through the window and saw the mess that had been left, then contacted the police. They put it down to the robberies that had been happening in the nearby city, especially when they saw the shoe print that was the same size and pattern as one left at another scene. That was a useful coincidence – I think I may have picked up the shoes worn by one of the culprits from the crimes I was mimicking."

Hotchner raises his brows to me, as if questioning what he's hearing. For all they know, I could be making this entire thing up; an elderly woman's last grasp for attention, my last chance to mark my time in the world, and it doesn't bother me if he does think that, for who is he to judge? "What were the reactions of your husband and brother-in-law?" he asks.

I look down at the table, remembering them like far away views from the top of a mountain. "I think it was relief. There was little discussion and few tears. Even Charles was stoic about the whole thing. We went through the motions of giving her a funeral. Charles received the life insurance without a problem and moved to New York. The house was sold, and I persuaded Edward to rent our property to a man and his wife who had just been employed to manage the part of business there in Virginia. Edward was spending more and more time in New Orleans, and as much as loved it there, I didn't want to spend weeks away from Mama at a time, so I began to care for her full time, with the help of the nurse."

"For how long did you live there?" Emily asks. Her coffee has gone cold. We must ask Susie to bring us more.

"You mean, for how long did she live?" I smile. People hide behind euphemisms. I prefer to stand in front of honesty. "Three more years. I stayed with her up until the day she died, and then long enough to help sort her belongings. We sold the house and auctioned its contents, and I moved to Chesapeake to be closer to my sister. Edward returned home every time he needed a shoulder to cry on, or had business to attend to in the area, but we lived separate lives, except for our finances. He was generous, as was Victor. I had cared for Mama, and Edward said once that he could never have given her grandchildren, but he gave her the daughter she always wanted. That meant a lot to me. I left Chesapeake three months before Edward died to go to New Orleans and nurse him. His body had succumbed to some horrific illness not long after Henrique had become sick and died quickly, but Edward died peacefully in the city he loved, and then I moved on, wealthier than I had even dreamed, with no dependants and the rest of my life to do as I wished."

How hopeless those words now sound, having spent the last quarter of a century without the freedom to choose what clothes I wear that day. The irony of it is not lost on my two agents; their gaze has changed somewhat now. They are unsure and know not what to say.

"You were never caught," Hotchner says. "You turned yourself in and gave the police and judge enough evidence to sentence you to death. Why?"

I study him, and I can see by the way he holds every muscle in his face so still that my stare is irking him. He doesn't know how to deal with me yet, like most men. He knows he would never have to use force with me, yet I am a killer, and he is used to having to consider using some violence with the killers he has met, even those who are in jail. "Agent Hotchner," I say. "Have you ever killed someone?"

He nods. "It's part of my job."

"To protect someone – your colleagues probably?" I say. I can see Emily wince. I'm close to home here. He identifies with me and that's what has silenced his usual questions.

"The public, and my son," he says. I wait. There is more. "I killed a man with my bare hands."

It is a confession, yet I am no priest. I can give no one solace and I have no intention of trying. "Then you and I are not unalike. Did you enjoy it?"

I know he is going to be honest here. His face has lost some of its anxiousness and a little of that introspection has been turned outwards. "Yes," he says. "What I remember of the time. Afterwards I felt hate that I had to take a life, but I never felt guilty."

I nod. "I've never felt guilt. I've never felt sad that I took a life either –maybe that's why I'm a serial killer and you're an FBI agent; it's the remorse that makes us different. There's one more murder I'd like to share with you – the last one. The one I confessed to. Do you have time?"

Emily glances at the watch that Hotchner has given her. She's well dressed, and her suit is of good, but not the top, quality. The watch, however, is one of the best money can buy. It's discreet rather than flashy, practical yet delicate enough to sit on a slim wrist, but it's bulletproof. She'd never have picked it for herself, or spent that amount of money, and my guess is that it's instead of an engagement ring. I make sure she sees me looking at the watch and then I look at her. She smiles, glancing fleetingly at it this time to admire the memories instead of the time. "We do," she says, not explaining what has just had to give to hear one more story.

"Twenty seven years ago, or nearly that, I moved back to Pennsylvania. By this time I had been married four times and widowed four times, all of my husbands finding an early grave in one way or another," I said, remembering each of their faces, Edward's with the most fondness.

"How many did you kill?" Emily says. "And what happened to the ones that you didn't?"

"Shall we ask for more coffee?" I say, and she gets up to buzz for Susie, or whoever has taken place of her as I suspect Susie's shift has now ended. "I killed two. My first was Harold Baker. He'd been married before and cheated on his wife many times, spending her inheritance to finance prostitutes and refusing to share his own earnings. I saw him make her life a living hell, and I vowed to take revenge after she took her own life. It was from him that I inherited enough money to mean I didn't need to remarry. Edward, you know about. My third husband died of cancer, a natural death if it can be called that. He was a lovely man, but he drank and smoked, and regardless of what the doctors told him, he continued.

"My fourth husband – John Peterson - drowned, not by his own hands of course, and it certainly wasn't an accident, although that was what it was deemed to be. He was swindling money from his workers through their pension fund. I spent weeks tracking down his finances before we were married – he was a clever man, but he lacked coordination so he'd never learnt to swim." I sigh, recalling the nights it had taken and the smiles I had had to force in order to play the part of la belle femme who knew nothing about accountancy. He fell for my seductive act, and it was easy to persuade him to take a midnight swim. "He was my penultimate kill – victim if you like."

"You didn't call them victims earlier," Hotchner says. "Are you starting to believe that they were?"

"Well they were certainly victims of murder," I say. "I can justify to myself why I killed each one so I don't think that they were true victims. They certainly weren't randomly chosen."

"My last kill was a man named David Davis who lived with his mother in Troutville, the place I had moved to after John had drowned. He lived with his mother in the house in which he had grown up, unmarried and unemployed, doing jobs as a handyman for the families and residents in his neighbourhood..."

_...It all seemed a little too perfect at first, the very picture of suburbia. I was in my late forties by this point, and looking for somewhere to settle. After the initial quiet of the place, Troutville seemed ideal. I worked in the local high school teaching domestic science three days a week, and occupied myself for the rest of the time with the various hobbies I'd picked up over the years, including writing letter to some of the friends I'd made in the places I'd lived._

_For the first time in what seemed like forever, no one bothered me. I had no would be suitor trying to wheedle their way into my bank account, knew of no wrong-doings that were going on and just enough contact with the world as it was to keep me from going stir crazy._

_I lived at the end house on a quiet road which led to farmer's fields. It had previously been owned by a professional couple, with a taste for the old worldly, so there had been little to do to make the house seem like home. My closest neighbour was separated by a tall wooden fence with climbing roses crossing it. It was too high for a ball to be kicked over, and the size of the gardens meant it was rare for me to hear the children playing out. In short, it was idyllic, and I thought that I had finally found the place where I could settle for however long I had left._

_And then David Davis moved to Troutville, and that changed everything. The first time I saw him he was working in a garden, erecting a picket fence to stop the small children that loved there from running onto the road. His hands were swollen and mottled red; his stature was too big for his frame, it looked as if his arms and legs had been pumped with air and his face was as smooth as a sheet of ice. He smiled at me as I passed, showing an array of perfect white teeth that contrasted sharply to the rest of him, and I shuddered even though it was the height of summer._

_My neighbour told me he had moved back to town to help care for his mother, who was now in her late seventies, and she seemed quite pleased with the fact. Comments had been passed previously about Mrs Davis, the state of her house and the fact that she was now failing to manage as well as she had. I'd stayed out of the conversation, knowing that in becoming involved in someone else's business meant that your own would be up for discussion as well. David Davis also provided cheap labour, taking on jobs that husbands were too busy to do, or didn't have the skills for, at minimum pay, but he still made my skin feel as if a thousand spiders were dancing over it._

_I didn't trust him, but then, there were few people I trusted immediately nowadays. I wasn't the vibrant, outgoing girl I had been in my teens and twenties. I had too many secrets to become friends with people, and I'd leant over the course of my sixteen murders that although most people are exactly what seem, others have been touched by evil, and I was all too proficient at identifying them._

_So I kept my distance; not even interfering when a student in one of my classes confided in me that she found David Davis creepy, that he kept staring at her while he was doing some odd jobs for her mom. He was a strange man, and his gaze did linger too long in places it shouldn't, but I put it down to learning difficulties, or being retarded, as we called it back then._

_But I watched him. I began to pay more attention, to listen more, and I noticed that the houses he accepted jobs at generally had children there. He would entertain the children, play with them, make them toys and the hairs on the back of my neck began to stand like soldiers every time I heard his name._

_Four or five months after he had moved to Troutville, my neighbour went into hospital to have a caesarean and her sister came to stay to look after the two children she had already. The sister, Julie, was younger than my neighbour by a good ten years, and the two were only just becoming close. Julie had no children of her own, and no younger siblings, so she knew little of what to do when one of them had a temperature, thus I found her on my doorstep at nine o'clock one evening, looking flustered._

_I'd never been able to have children, which was a blessing as I'd never felt the need to be someone's mother, but I'd learnt a great deal as the eldest of several brothers and sisters. Within half hour, the youngest boy was asleep, and Julie had poured us both a glass of wine. Ten minutes after polite conversation the topic turned to David Davis, Julie's face growing pale._

"_He's part of the reason I agreed to look after my nieces," she said. "I'm in college, and I've had to beg for time off my studies, but I had to come."_

"_Why?" I said, my glass of wine still full. "Because he'd moved here."_

_I looked at her, waiting for her to speak, to divulge more information._

"_He likes children, young girls."_

"_You?" I said. I didn't think so; victims of such crimes rarely speak about them._

_She shook her head. "My friend and her sister. They both moved away and I didn't hear from them after. Their parents told the police but I think they didn't want the girls to have to give evidence, so they left instead. This was years ago, more than a decade, but he still looks the same with that baby face."_

"_How did he manage it?" I say, putting the wine down. It's never been a drink I favoured, preferring bourbon still._

_Julie is quiet. "He befriended them, and their parents. He was helpful and nice, made them toys and they trusted him. He even began to babysit them when their parents went away. I don't know how long it went on for before they told, or their parents found out, but they moved suddenly, and then he moved after, as the rumours started. My dad and a group of his friends threatened to go round and make sure he didn't do it again, but his house was empty. We didn't tell my sister. She'd moved away by then, had graduated college and met Clive, so when she said his name she couldn't understand why I was quiet."_

"_You haven't told her?" I say. "You've not warned her?"_

_She shakes her head. "No. It was only ever rumour. The parents never said anything. I just remember Marsha saying to me as her parents loaded the car that David Davis had touched her and her sister, and that was why they were going. Marsha was always a drama queen, and she liked to stir up trouble. The rumours started separately, so I always kind of believed them, no smoke without fire and all that, but if I say something here, and he's innocent then..."_

"_This is the first time you've heard of him since you were twelve?" I say, trying to play down her fears. She was right, what she had to say could cause a vigilante attack, and that, among other things would make him a martyr._

_She nods. The sound of the church bells echo across the fields, their last chimes before the end of the day; one of time's many demarcations._

"_Then your friend may have been making it up, and it would be easy for a careless word about why they moved to provoke anger against him. Look after your nieces," I tell her. "And say nothing as yet. We'll see what else comes about." I stand, thanking her for the wine she hasn't noticed I'd not drank, and then I leave. There was work to do._

_I spent the next few weeks travelling to the various places David Davis had lived since leaving the village where Julie had grown up. Finding out information was easy when you had the money and the time to do it, and I quite enjoyed my foray into the world of private detection._

_The same story was given three times. David Davis left places abruptly, disappearing in the middle of the night, leaving tales of touches that should never have been made behind him. In one town, the police officer I spoke was aware of his name, and allegations had been made, but then withdrawn._

_I asked why he hadn't been investigated further, already knowing the answer: not enough evidence and Davis had left, the problem solved. And so David Davis had continued, fleeing before he could face any charges, leaving a trail of discreet destruction in his wake. There were those children who had spoken up, and then there would be those who had remained forever silent. _

_I had lost some of my drive to kill. It no longer gave me the same thrill as it had done twenty years before, although I knew I would never be caught. However, the urge tingled, and I spent the next few weeks fantasizing just how I could dispose of David Davis, and make sure this pattern he had created was permanently ended._

_What stood in the way was his mother. Mrs Davis was a nice lady. I'd met and spoken with her several times in the local shops, and she reminded me a little of Mama Jones. To kill her only child in a horrific way would have killed her too, and since David's return home, she'd been looking much better, better fed and dressed, and the house had been much improved too, mainly down to the extra money he gave her from his odds jobs that supplemented her small savings._

_David Davis' death was planned in more detail than anything I'd done before, even my third wedding. I pushed aside the fantasies I had about castration and slow strangulation, poison and drowning, all but the first being tried and tested methods already. I didn't want the mess, and I didn't want this to be discovered as an accident, or some horrific murder, which, in truth, I thought he deserved. What David Davis needed to do was to disappear, that way his mother could still receive some small income and maintain the memories she had of her son._

_I waited for the rumours to start, which they inevitable did, and also inevitably they began by floating round the high school. Sian Tanner was teased at the end of one of my classes for being one of 'Lame' Davis' girlfriends. I pulled her back, under the pretence of needing a job doing, and asked her about what the boys had said._

_She was quiet at first, then after studying me for about a minute, she began to speak. "It's not me he's hanging round for," she said, keeping her voice low so no one else could hear. "I think it's my sister. My mom thinks he's wonderful as he helps with all the maintenance jobs that haven't been done since my dad left, but I see him watching Alice all the time. He walked in on her when she was in the bath, and claimed it was a mistake. Mom said what would it matter anyway, she's only nine, but it wasn't a mistake. Alice was singing in the bath and he could hear her as well as I. Please don't say anything, Miss Desmarais, mom will get mad and say I'm stirring up trouble."_

_I nod. "I won't say anything," I tell her, my heart rate slightly risen with the green flag I've just received. "Have you heard anymore stories like this about him?"_

_Sian inhales deeply and nods almost imperceptibly. "Yeah. He's called a pervert by some of the boys as they've caught him staring at girls too obviously. Mariah Lucas said he was trying to get her sister to go see the strawberries he'd grown in his garden, but Mariah wouldn't let her. A few girls won't go near him, and apparently Joshua Struthers smeared something awful along his truck the other week. It's all rumour – but then, would anyone actually say if he'd..." she shudders, "...done anything to them?"_

_I say nothing. The bell goes for the start of the third hour and Sian gets up to go. "Thanks, Miss," she says. "I know you'll do something about it that's right."_

_I remember smiling at her comment._

_A few days later, on the Thursday of the week following my conversation with Sian, I asked David Davis as he was passing my house to clean the pump in my pond. I wasn't a great fan of ponds, but this one I had inherited with the house, and it needed to be done as the whole thing was starting to smell and possibly wasn't sanitary._

_My neighbours were away, having taken the two girls and the new baby on vacation to see Julie's mom, who now lived near the beach. The trees that surrounded my garden were tall and dense, thick leafy maples and ashes that gave me privacy and acted as a natural barrier between my land, the farmers' fields behind and the woodland beyond._

_I exchanged small talk with David Davis when he arrived; made him a coffee and a freshly baked English scone with clotted cream and jam, and then showed him the pond. His back was to me, and the water too dirty to provide a reflection when I lifted the handgun to the back of his head and fired._

_I hadn't bothered with a silencer. It would have meant a new gun for a start, and gunshots were not that rare around Troutville, not with the issues with wildlife – plus it was the hunting season, and it was commonplace to hear several shots a day, plenty more in the evenings when the men reverted to their caveman selves, only with modern weapons. _

_He fell onto the netting that had been used to protect the fish from birds, his head sinking it into the water, which washed some of the blood away. I would have to clean the pond myself, which wouldn't be a problem. My looks were in their autumn, but I had retained the wiry strength from my youth and young womanhood, and it wasn't too difficult to drag the body of David Davis into a wheelbarrow and push it over to a shallow ditch I had dug underneath the trees, next to several shrubs I wanted to plant there. The body would decompose, giving an extra boost to the soil._

_I buried the gun with him, somehow knowing that I didn't want every shred of evidence of this crime to disappear, and planted the shrubs where he lay. I felt no remorse, but the joy I used to feel after a kill was not the same, a mere glimmer to the blaze it once was._

_His disappearance was unremarkable. A rumour circulated that he had taken a job in Chesapeake as a carpenter, a believable story as he had been talented in that area, and little more was said. Sian began smiling again, and the teasing stopped. The damage that David Davis might have caused was unknown, but at least it could not be continued._

_I went to see his mother four weeks after he had gone, and asked after him. She was honest, said she didn't know why he had left so suddenly, but that he had done it before. Then she looked down at the floor and told me that she had always known he wasn't right, but he was all she had._

_The next day, she would have found a deposit of money in her account – she shouldn't have left her check book on show – and the same each month, the amount varying. She stayed looking healthy and tidy, the house was maintained well enough to avoid the discussion of her neighbours, and when she died, I believe she left her savings and the proceeds from her house to the junior high school..._

...I smile. I had always been pleased with the outcome of that one. Coffee and cakes have been delivered without me being aware, and Emily is eating slivers of banana loaf. I pour a coffee from the flask that's been left and take a piece myself, savouring the moistness and the taste.

"Why did you confess to his murder three years later?" Hotchner asks. "You had gotten away with it. The place where you disposed of his body would never have been investigated unless you moved away and someone wished to renovate the garden."

I look away now, for this is the part that is most difficult, the part I have never wanted to discuss. "Love," I say. "People say they would kill for love, I did the opposite. I refused to kill for it." I know my eyes are colder now, for these are the memories I can never forgive myself for.

They wait for me to continue. I drink my coffee. I am tired of talking now and my throat is dry, but this one last part is important.

"I had a way with men," I say. "But they did not always have a way with me. Throughout my life, I never fell in love. I liked and loved many men, but never with a passion. They never evoked that all consuming emotion in me unless I was ending their life. Robert was fifteen years my junior and he started as a teacher at the high school in the fall after I killed David Davis. He was talented, and intelligent, but most of all, beautiful, and I fell head over heels in lust with him, and then love consumed me."

"I didn't look my age back then. Not having children or a long term husband had saved my skin, and Robert and I began an affair. Affair is the right word, as he was married. His wife was a sweet, pretty creature who worked away during the week in Philadelphia, and Robert began to spend most of his weeknights with me.

"The guard I had created and secured so many years before had softened, and I didn't question why I was sleeping better the nights Robert stayed, or why Robert was always awake before me, dressed and smiling, armed with fresh coffee and breakfast. Not until I checked in with my accountant and noticed small amounts of money having disappeared from my accounts.

"Immediately I knew. The house he lived in with his wife was small. It lacked a second bedroom and a garden, and was in an area of town the opposite to mine, not an ideal place to bring up a family, which I guessed they both wanted. I understood by now that she didn't stay working away from him because of the status of her job, but because they couldn't afford her to leave it, there was nothing as good in Troutville and they were carrying debt.

"If he'd have asked, I'd have helped them financially. I had no desire to stop being his mistress and become something more, and I loved him enough to want him to be happy. Besides, I had more money than I would ever need, and would be quite happy to share it quietly with someone I loved.

"But he'd been stealing from me; going through my personal documents and piecing together my finances, seeing how much he could get without me realising. And that meant he'd have noticed that it was me who paid Mrs Davis a sum of money every month, and had had four husbands – something which the town was oblivious to.

"I did nothing for a month, more maybe. I watched how he was spending the money; not saving it for a better house, or to allow his wife to get a less well paid job here, but buying clothes and fripperies, enjoying expensive lunches. I guess that annoyed me. But he was still so beautiful, and charming, and by now , I knew that every person had their flaws, so I could forgive him his. I suppose I was becoming soft in my old age.

"I stopped drinking the cocoa he made for me at night, and started to listen to where he went to in my house. Then one night, when he was certain I was asleep, I followed him, watched him take out my check book and write himself one for a small amount, then took a few notes from the cash I kept hidden, along with Edward's diary that I had never read.

"He turned around, suddenly aware that I was watching him, and jumped, his mouth agape, horror crossing his face. "I'm not seeing you because of your money," he said, and I believed him. "But you have so much. I didn't realise until I saw a letter..."

"I knew what he was referring to; a note from my solicitor concerning the sale of the business run by Edward and Victor. Victor had never married, living a celibate life, and he had left his life's work and savings to me when he had died a few months previously.

""Why didn't you ask? I would have helped you out, you know," I said, my words gentle.

""People don't do that though, do they? And besides, I can't leave my wife."

""I wouldn't ask you too," I said, and then I saw his eyes and read them as easily as reading a book. He wanted to blackmail me. I laughed at the thought.

"I could have killed him. It would have been quite easy in that rambling old house. There were enough ways to dispose of the body, although that one I would have passed off as somebody else's murder – there was a couple of serial killers around at the time with very easy to replicate modes of operating.

"But he was so beautiful, crouched down there, the moonlight stroking his face. Maybe it was weariness, or age; maybe it was something I ate that night, or the passion I'd felt when I had made love to him. Or maybe it was simply inevitable. I asked him to leave, and then, after putting on my best suit, and make up, I went to the police and confessed to the murder of David Davis," I say, my story told at last. "That way, I could never harm him. He would be safe."

They glance at each other, the agents. The flask of coffee had been emptied, and I imagined that any daylight had now been coloured in dark by night. I stood up, stretching my legs and feeling the weight of my flesh and bones which I wouldn't have to bear for much longer.

"Why did you kill them?" Emily asked, a repetition of an earlier question.

"Because I could," I said. "If I had reported their crimes to the police then they may never have been punished. The eyes of society would be on them, and I wouldn't have had the chance to make sure they no longer hurt anyone. And besides, I enjoyed the kill. Maybe that was the most important reason."

"Do you not think that killing made you just as bad as them?" she asked. It's a fair question.

"I was never anything to be afraid of," I said. "Unless you were doing something to hurt others. Do I think what I did was right – no, probably not, not under the laws that are upheld in this country and others, and you shouldn't enjoy killing. I did, and I would have enjoyed killing Robert, but I loved him too much."

I walked to the door and buzzed for the guard to come and get me. "Thank you for your time, agents," I said as I heard footsteps coming down the corridor. "Have a lovely evening, whatever your plans maybe." I turned around and passed them a smile; they answered my questions without knowing it and I was sure that there is still something good in the outside world. They were standing close again, almost shoulder to shoulder, and I wondered if they have booked one or two hotel rooms. One, I hoped, as two would be a waste of the country's resources as they will only use one anyway. They seemed like equals, a balancing act perfected between them and I wished them well in their lives, and hoped they could explore that love whose path my life avoided.

I left them in the room, walking down the corridor back to my cell, the place where I received my last meal, two weeks after a stay of execution while the crimes I confessed to were investigated and where I slept my last night, until this, my final hour, now my final few minutes.

They agreed to let me count the stars, and to an evening execution. The agents are long gone, their investigation ended, my recounts now being studied, giving insights into the criminal mind, of which mine is one.

Three guards watch me as I stand here now and look at the sky, the night sweetly black, spotted with silver light. Susie has been to say goodbye, and I smiled at her knowingly, silently commending her bravery. In the past two weeks she has lost weight and began to exercise, the shadows of her past becoming paler with the lights that shone in front of her. I asked for her to not be here tonight; she has to make her own decisions in the future, and my ending should not influence those. So no one is here to watch my death, no one cares about the people I killed and I have no family left that I have had contact with. I have reached the end, and I am glad. My heart is singing, for I have lived exactly as I wished, counting the stars.

I cannot count them all, I could never count them all, for they are infinite, like a child's wishes. I inhale the night air and remember that Friday evening, when I ran barefoot through the woods carrying the mushrooms and the freedom of my own decision, and the exhilaration I felt, succumbing to it sixteen more times before this. The stars were not far away that night, those nights. They were close, I touched them with my hands and became one each time. I loved living, and letting others live, but now is right, the right time for me to die, now is the time to leave the stars behind and I follow the guard inside to where the needle will kiss my flesh, and my heart will no longer be old.


End file.
